We’ll have to go beyond destroying drinks in the war on alcoholism

Barrack Muluka – Fri, 3. July 2015 9:25 AM – New reporter story (Nairobi)

We’ll have to go beyond destroying drinks in the war on alcoholism

 

The images of drunken hopelessness across the country speak of a society in abject violence against itself. The emerging initiative to fight the wretchedness only takes the violence into another guise and lifts it to a new level. Why would a nation’s youth want to drown in alcohol? We need to look at this question stark in the eye. Our situation speaks of structural violence against ourselves.

John Galtung, as early as 1969, suggested that social structures and institutions will often harm people by preventing them from meeting their social needs. This challenge takes the form of institutionalised elitism, racism, sexism, ageism, able body-ism, classism, ethnicity and other isms.

 Society is structured in such a manner that people are excluded from opportunities because of belonging to some massive identity group. In the end, frustration sets in, opening the door to antisocial behaviour. The driving force is structural violence. It is a non-physical violence with serious physical consequences.

That there are dangerous drinks out there is not in doubt. But they are not the real problem. Yes, we have heard of people eager to make a quick buck. They lace drinks with all manner of poisonous intoxicants and accelerants. We are told that some of the substances that our youth administer upon themselves come straight from the mortuary.

They are meant for preserving dead bodies. Producers of illicit intoxicants across the country have found that these substances will instantly transfer the user into hopeless paradise. The thought that Kenyans are drenched in drunken hopelessness because of availability of tragic liquids can tease us with bogus easy answers. Get rid of the drinks. Lock up the drunkards and their suppliers. Yet, even as a keen layman in these matters, I see that this is to miss the point – or even deliberately parry it.

Even at the superficial level of accosting and destroying the drinks out there, we still miss the point. Now that President Kenyatta has weaved his way into this effort, we are going to see overzealous individuals cutting across the country, occasioning an overflow of rivers of alcohol.

We are going to witness manufacturers of the so-called “second level” something in police chains. They will be frog-marched from here to there in gross humiliation. Pseudo industrial drinks will be seized and destroyed in public. Yet, methinks, this will not solve the problem.

We still need to come to terms with the real source of these poisons. How do the brewers come by the chemicals they lace these drinks with? In what other forms are these deadly chemicals consumed? Our people have said that when men learn to shoot without missing, birds will learn to fly without perching. The consumer’s interest is in the active ingredient.

 It is not necessarily in the drinks. The liquids they consume are only mediums of transmitting that active ingredient. If it cannot be availed through the brew, will it not be availed through some other medium? So, who is the supplier of this active ingredient? How do we arrest the supplies and the supplier?

 

Behind all these questions is the issue of hard drugs. Every so often we see in the news persons arrested with mind-boggling amounts of hard drugs. Most of the time it is at the airports, especially at East Africa’s foremost airport, the JKIA in Nairobi.

The story will enjoy huge press coverage, sometimes complete with displays of square yards of the seized goods. That, however, becomes the end of the story. If it ever goes farther, it will only be to the extent that someone appeared in court. And the story ends there. What usually happens to these people and their drugs? Do they buy their way to freedom, in a country reputed to be the paradise of the corrupt? Do these drugs find their way to the “breweries”? Could they be some of the substances lacing the drinks that have made youth zombies?

The zombification of our youth is, however, a huger problem than just easy availability of these poisons. Is there a sense in which these people seem to be running away from a problem? Do they seem to find comfort in burying themselves in hard drugs via direct injection and applied drugs via drinks? The enemy to be accosted seems to be the factor behind these drunken stupors, not just availability of substances. What are the psychosocial factors?

Our own Anzeze Were has written a beautiful book on disempowerment of men in the African context. What is our real worth as men? Do we truly have self-esteem as men? This challenge is in part addressed in this simply told reflection.

The African male has been the victim of abuse through hundreds of years. The colonial experience and that of slavery before eroded his dignity and self esteem. The post-colonial situation has not made things any better. Here is an individual who has failed to provide for himself and for his family. He is a walking package of overwhelming frustrations and inferiority. He cannot look at himself in the mirror, leave alone look some other person in the eye. His manhood has been literally emasculated by self-rejection. The only way he could live with himself is by imprisoning himself in permanent blankness.

The ongoing campaign against alcoholism is nonetheless a good thing. It shows that someone is beginning to wake up to this menace. Effective solutions will however only come from more structured and fact based initiatives. We must answer questions on the uselessness of training people in schools, colleges and universities and disgorging them into the world without caring what comes of them post the graduation parade.

Young people leave high school and higher learning institutions bursting with the joy of fulfillment and arrival. They are ready to take on the world. They even say strange things like, “I have cleared.” Cleared what, you wonder? This is to say they have “cleared” school.

Slowly, reality begins sinking in. The gears of training are mismatched with the engines of the real world. There is no room for the new graduate from high school, college or university. Even the one who gets some form of employment is not off the hook. S/he can hardly make ends meet. The women are forced into other ways of subsidising income. Men go into crime. Those unable to marshal the “courage” and spirit to go into crime sink into alcohol and allied substances. The political class itself finds these zombies very helpful. They can be hired or rented on the cheap for antisocial activities. When they sober up a little, they hate themselves even more. They go out for a fresh and even more lethal toke.

In the end, we will have to go beyond just destroying drinks. We will have to do more than rounding up, harassing and humiliating people who instead need psychosocial help. These zombies reflect who we have become. Let us dialogue with ourselves for lasting solutions.

Related Topics

John Galtung